“Putin obviously thought that dependency would matter in 2022. It almost did, he was just...premature.”
Europe made their choices...they chose “ALL”, which wasn’t an option (as they learned the hard way).
Europe is far from out of the woods, even in a best case, they’ll never be competitive again in energy-heavy industries (which was most of Germany’s industry). And, at a minimum, Putin managed to do something that literally NO POLITICIAN in Europe was able to do, which was to send Greta back to The Spectrum. I’m still waiting for Europe to thank him for that.
Agree on China, by the way.
German industries are only “energy heavy” in one sense.
They do a lot of chemicals and metal bashing.
But in Germany’s case the big deal isnt the energy part, but the value-added beyond the fact of manufacture.
You expend the same energy to make widget A in China vs making some similar widget Ax in Germany. But Germany can get 2X the price for their value-added widget Ax. Germany really isn’t about competing in commodity widget markets.
Increased cost of energy means German profit margins will be reduced, somewhat, until the energy supply constraints are resolved. These are being resolved btw.
Russia using its energy cost advantages could be making widget A too, and undercutting China. But the screwed up Russian system wherein the bulk of earnings is invested abroad instead of being invested at home means that the Russian economy gets very little benefit from its energy sales.